We reached Drumheller, where we purchased from Mr. Moore of the same place a five horse power motor boat; we also built a flat boat 12 feet by 28 feet. We pitched two tents on deck, one for sleeping in, the other for a kitchen. Jack McGee and I went aboard. We threw a rope to Charlie in his motor boat, which he fastened to a post on the small deck behind. Some kindly hand pushed us off into the stream, Charlie got up power and dragged us into the current. The women and children were on hand to see us off. Our motor boat under Charlie’s management went chug, chug, down the river at the rate of five miles an hour. The water was at full flood, covered with drift wood and floating logs, but we rapidly passed them. Levi had taken the team and wagon over the rough road to Steveville. As we swiftly glided along, the table buttes, haystack-like mounds, and long naked ridges that mark out the exposures of the Edmonton Series, were in full view on either side. The heads of ravines, under the prairie level were packed with clumps of aspen and other trees, as was the narrow flood plain and scattered islands with cottonwoods. We reached the mouth of Willow Creek at one thirty in the afternoon. The scenery in ever-shifting panoramas, was beautiful indeed. The rushing river hurried us on from one prospect to another, each one seemingly more beautiful than the last. The grey sandstone beds increased in thickness, and the visible coal seams thinned out. Fifteen miles below Drumheller the Edmonton beds ran under the river, the yellow silt of the Pleistocene capping the older beds. Great land slides impinged on the curves of the ox-bows of the winding stream. Concretions stuck out of the sandstone ledges, like toad stools on a pine log. The river was about 600 feet wide. At three in the afternoon the upper buttes had disappeared. Sharply rounded haystack buttes, or sugar loaves, and narrow ridges that tongued out from the prairie on the south, were visible. On the north, long grassy slopes were frequent. The valley widened and the hills retreated towards the distant prairie. There were ranches along the flood plain. At four thirty we reached a ranch twenty-five miles below Drumheller. We now got into the marine Fort Pierre. These beds underlie the Edmonton, and were exposed along the river’s edge. Rounded bluffs, with here and there an exposure of dark shales were the order of the day. The timber shrunk and the grass was short; showing the effects of the unfriendly alkaline shales on the soil. By five o’clock we had left the last of the Edmonton beds behind. The Pierre and Pleistocene occupy all the country. The flood plain widens to about three miles. We tied up for the night at a willow thicket, and the tireless chug, chug, of the motor ceased. We prepared to spend the night there. After supper I went into the Pierre hills, and found numberless large concretions that contained huge ammonites. But just as the rock was shattered by the weather so also were the shells. I could not find a good specimen. We got a number of beautiful ones, however, over the Belly river beds, where the Pierre again appears, showing that before, as well as after, the country was occupied with the fresh water beds of the Cretaceous, the sea had covered the country for a long period of time. We were early astir, and Charlie hauled us in mid-stream. A strong east wind blew in our faces, it was disagreeable, because we had to lower our tents to the deck, as they acted as sails, and the power of the wind on them was stronger than the current and the five horse power motor would have driven us up stream. The choppy waves beat constantly against the front and sides of our scow curling over the deck itself. The wind howled in the few cottonwoods along the shore and on the islands, that we passed. The hills on either side were lower; at Bull Pond Creek, scarcely seventy-five feet in height. About nine o’clock we reached the fifth ferry below Drumheller. The ferry man had stretched a barbed wire across the river; Charlie saw it as he drove his motor under it and shouted to us, Jack rushed for the rear guiding oar and I for the front one, they were both stuck several feet up in the air, and if the wire had caught one, it would have swamped us. Jack had his back to the wire and when he released the oar and stood up, it caught his hat and threw it in the river. If the wire had been six inches lower, or the river six inches higher, it would have cut his head off as easily, and thrown it into the river.

We were also thankful the tents were down. If they had not been, they would have been torn from the deck. We soon got into a new horizon. I knew this by the change in the sculpturing of the bluffs. We tied up to a willow thicket for dinner; the wind began to fall. At ten minutes of five in the afternoon the naked buttes, towers and ridges of the Belly River Series of the Cretaceous loomed up in the distance. We soon reached Steveville, (Fig. 10) and managed to make a landing in the swift stream, just below the Ferry, and below the mouth of Berry Creek on whose border the little town stood. A hospitable town it proved to us; especially have we often enjoyed the hospitality of Steve Hall’s Hotel; after this jolly good fellow the town gets its name. We were not far from Mr. Brown’s camp. He had a party here collecting for the American Museum. I was delighted to learn that my son George, who had been working for the American Museum under Brown for over a year, had been appointed on the Geological Survey of Canada, and would join my party.

We found that we had made the eighty miles from Drumheller in sixteen hours (Fig. 10) travel. And though the trip had been delightful, and exciting, I was glad to walk again on solid ground. I had gotten used, however, to the cheerful chug, chug of the little motor, saying “all’s well.” It took good judgment on Charlie’s part to choose always the deep water route, on a stream he had never navigated before, to know which side of an island to take when the current parted, and always choose the strongest. Mr. Shaw the ferryman at Steveville, showed me a ledge of rock at the water-level, about a hundred yards above the ferry, that was literally packed with plants, especially water lily leaves, that were as perfectly preserved as if impressions were made of them in wax. I secured a large collection for the Victoria Memorial Museum. Charlie and I went down the river to spy out the land. We found a large exposure of the strata on the south side of the river. He was so fortunate as to find the skeleton of a carnivore that promised to be the most perfect one known to science at that time, from the Cretaceous (Fig. 11). This has since been proved to be the truth. In this specimen the ventral ribs and one front limb appear in their normal position for the first time in a carniverous dinosaur from the Cretaceous. The figure shows it as he found it. The double row of ventral ribs, the head and the hind limbs, with one foot lying on the slope in sight. Our work was thus laid out for us and on the Fourth of July we moved our camp to the site shown in the figure, about three miles below Steveville on the southern side of Red Deer River. Our camp was near a large area of badlands. A splendid flat for the horses, wood and water without end. If you will reread my explorations of the Kansas Chalk, where we had cow chips to burn, and alkaline water to drink, beneath a burning sun, you will realize how much we enjoyed this camp. (Fig. 15.) It was not perfect, however, the mosquitoes made life a burden, but with smudges ever going, our nets over our shoulders when we moved in the sage brush, we were reasonably comfortable, especially as we got fresh butter, eggs and chickens every week from a neighboring farmer. This proved the richest camp I ever made. Further, to add to our blessings we were only three miles from the post office, and a trip for the mail on our motor boat, was a delightful change from the heavy work in the beds. Levi came into camp with the outfit and George soon joined us, and no one ever had so many born fossil hunters in one party before, full of enthusiasm, each trying to find better specimens than the other, but with friendly rivalry; we put in the most profitable and delightful summer I have ever experienced. Charlie took possession of Jack McGee and settled down to the heavy work of excavating the carnivore from the face of the cliff. I show you a picture (Fig. 12) taken by Charlie himself of the two men at work, after they had nearly finished wrapping the two heavy sections of the trunk; Jack is cutting burlap strips, while Charlie is mending some bones that tore out when they separated the two sections. Then again (Fig. 13) with triplex block they are hoisting a section into the wagon. The two men put in six strenuous weeks, removing the great mass of rock that lay above the bones, blasting out tons of rock, and dumping it below on the side of the gulch to make a road. Jack used to say in regard to the skeleton “it is altogether wonderful.” To which sentiment I fully agreed. You will get some idea of the labor required if you look at the picture with Charlie standing in the quarry after the specimen had been removed. (Fig. 14.) When they hauled the sections out it was along a ridge so narrow that if the horses had balked or a wheel had slipped they would have been dashed to pieces in the gorge below. So important seemed this specimen to me I wanted the advice of the principle paleontologists in the Eastern United States, before we mounted it. So with authority from the Director of the Survey, Charlie and I visited Pittsburgh first, where we were cordially received by Dr. Holland, the Director. Both Dr. Holland and Mr. Peterson the paleontologist and also Mr. Earl Douglass, the noted collector and preparator of the huge Brontosaurus material from Nevada. All three agreed, that in their opinion we should make a panel mount of the carnivore, not taking it out of the original matrix. They used the argument that a student could then come to his own conclusions in regard to it as easily as if he had collected it himself, while if we made an open mount of it, he would have to depend on the veracity of the preparator. We were kindly treated here and saw the magnificent Brontosaur Mr. Douglas had found in Nevada. It is a fourth larger than the famous Diplodocus carnegii. World renowned, because of the casts Mr. Carnegie has sent to the Museums of Europe. The Brontosaur is sixteen feet high at the hips and eighty-two feet long. We hurried on to Washington, and there both Mr. Gilmour and Gidley, the vertebrae paleontologists, were warm in their opinions that it would be a crime to take it out of its original matrix, and thus lose the authority that goes with it. Mr. Gilmour showed me the fine skeleton of a Stegosaur they had just mounted in the way he proposed we should mount ours. It lies on a base a couple of feet above the floor, in the rock in which it was buried. He assured me that people showed more interest in this mount than in any other in the National Museum though they had some splendid open mounts. Mr. Gilmour claims that to advance our science rapidly, complete articulated skeletons should be left in the original rock in which they were buried. The scattered skeletons and those well known might be exhibited in open mounts.

At Philadelphia, I saw Dr. Nolan who has been the Secretary of the Philadelphia Academy of Science since he was first elected in 1876. He thought a slab mount the most impressive, and could not realize how any one would think of mounting it otherwise. Then we traveled out to Princeton, and this was the first and only time I have been there. I greatly enjoyed their magnificent collection. I was especially interested in Waterhouse Hawkins’ paintings on the ceilings, of troops of Laelaps, or duck-billed dinosaurs running on their powerful hind limbs, carrying their huge tails clear of the ground—a pose that many paleontological artists stick to with amazing tenacity. I have proved over and over again that these animals were swimmers. We were invited to the home of Prof. W. B. Scott, and after I told him the condition of our carnivore, he at once said the bones should not be taken out of the matrix. He instanced the case of the great collection of Iguanodonts in the Brussels Museum, some thirty individuals. Many mounted in their rocky sepulchers. Our carnivore should lie as we found him on a slab in bold relief. I must confess that my original idea that it should be mounted over the partial skeleton of a Trachodont on which he was to be feeding was fast falling away from me in the face of such opinions by the greatest of our paleontologists. When we reached New York we met in the American Museum, the President, Dr. Henry F. Osborn, Dr. Mathews the Curator of Vertebrate Fossils, and his assistants, Mr. Granger and Barnum Brown. Dr. Osborn gave the opinion that was held by all the others, that we should mount it as we found it, clearing away the rock so all the bones stand out from their matrix, but held in it, except where limb bones might cover some other bones; in which case they must be removed and mounted clear. I had not a foot to stand on, when I visited the authority on dinosaurs, Dr. Lull of Yale. He took us out to lunch and agreed with the other students, without question. I was glad indeed, therefore to reconsider my first opinion and recommend to the Director of the Geological Survey, that we should mount it as the paleontologists had indicated, as I believe this would be a world specimen in which all students of ancient life would be interested. Mr. Lambe agreeing with this opinion also.

Charlie spent the greater part of eight months, including the winter of 1913, in preparing it. There is a great deal more to do before it is finally mounted permanently in the Museum at Ottawa. Mr. Lambe, the Vertebrate Paleontologist of the Geological Survey of Canada, has called this noted specimen Gorgosaurus libratus, or in English, if you please, “The fierce looking easily balanced carniverous dinosaur.” The skull is about three feet long, with all the teeth in place; they are from four to five inches in length, slightly recurved, with flattened sides, double edged, with serrated margins. Fierce indeed must he have looked, when he slunk up on his prey, his eyes flashing cruelty, with glistening teeth also, and forked tongue. His entire body from the front of the jaws, to end of the tail was twenty-nine feet in length. His powerful hind limbs, on which the entire body was balanced, were ten and a half feet in length. He had three great, claw-armed toes, and one not so large, raised from the ground like the spur of a rooster. His front limbs were mere vestigials, only twenty-three inches long; and the digits were reduced to two, with weak claw bones. We are unable to imagine to what use they could have been put. The abdominal walls were protected in front by 16 pairs of ventral ribs, that were united to the regular ribs by rods of bone on each side; they passed each other midway in front, in order to allow the increase and decrease in the walls during the act of breathing, sliding at their ends, back and forth with each breath. They were as effectively protected as if sheathed in iron hoops. The long bones were hollow, and the feet like those of a running bird. In front of the pelvic arch the pubic bones were provided with two large feet, that, in position, were in a line with the ventral ribs. In order to rest on these he must have been able to flex his limbs like a living Sphenodon, or New Zealand lizard (eighteen inches or more in length) does. This seems a more reasonable pose to me than the one usually given Cretaceous carniverous dinosaurs. I cannot believe he always made a conspicuous object of himself when he was hunting over the grassy and rushy plains for his prey, the herbivorous dinosaurs. I would rather think he slunk along their spoor or the trails, they had beaten through the rank vegetation, as a tiger would crawl up on his victim. So I picture him, when I try to put life into his old dry bones. It has been the habit of paleontologists to make a composite animal of a dinosaur, with characters of birds, mammals and reptiles. Several trachodonts and horned dinosaurs I have seen painted, with a thick rhinoceros-like skin, when we now know they had scales patterned after the Gila Monster of Arizona today as far as the scales go. The bones on the underside of the tail, called chevrons, are shaped like runners, as if to carry out my belief, that he dragged his tail behind him like a lizard of today. What was his ventral armor for, if not to protect the vital organs from the hard tough rushes and swamp grass of his habitat? What would be the use of the ventral ribs otherwise? From my work in shop and quarry, I am convinced these great reptiles will be treated and posed as lizards some day. Now the Vertebrate Paleontologists follow Cope, and Marsh in their views of these animals when, in reality they are simply reptiles that have long since become extinct, leaving no living representatives. The nearest being the lizards.

I climbed the rugged buttes and ridges. Many are entirely devoid of vegetation. Our work was in a canyon four or five hundred feet deep and measuring a mile from prairie to prairie, with long creeks or coulees running back into the flats. Their head branches spreading out like an open fan, as on Sand Creek, exposing thousands of acres of denuded rock to the sun. I was so fortunate as to find two more or less complete skeletons of a new duck-billed dinosaur, one with much of the beautiful skin impression preserved. The small scales, often mere tubercles, polygonal in shape arranged like mosaic-work in a pavement with ornamental elevations “limpet-like” in form, they are arranged in parallel rows along the abdominal walls and were reduced in size and number in the tail. Mr. Lambe has figured some of these lovely scales. He calls the new creature Stephanosaurus marginatus[A] or the crowned lizard. Barnum Brown discovered a wonderfully complete skeleton here, he gives it the name of Corythosaurus casuarius. Because the crested head resembles a Cassowary. I am delighted to be able to use with the permission of The American Museum authorities Deckert’s restoration for my Front Piece. With all the wonderfully complete skeletons my party have found of Cretaceous dinosaurs, I am forced in this specimen, to yield the palm to Mr. Brown, I am glad to acknowledge the wonderful skill of this indefatigable Collector and Paleontologist. Science can never repay what she owes him for grand skeletons of the Cretaceous Dinosaurs with which he has enriched the American Museum. Half a mile away from the skin impression and some of the skeleton, I found part of the head, and many of the bones, including the ischia, or the two pelvic bones that point backward and the further ends of these bones were footed, showing that he could bring his huge body down to the ground and rest it partly on these strong feet. Unfortunately only half of the head was present and its top was not complete. However, enough was preserved to show these saurians with footed ischia had crested heads, and were different in this respect from the Trachodon already referred to from the Edmonton Formation. I was so fortunate as to find in the same beds at Loveland Ferry, ten miles below the mouth of Dead Lodge Canyon, (a new locality Charlie located in 1915) two skeletons, within fifteen feet of each other, one with most of the tail, the trunk to shoulder blades, and the hind limbs. The other contains three caudal, or tail vertebrae, and the whole column in front, with arches, front and hind limbs, except that one hind foot and one fore foot were missing. A very fine head was found pressed back against the back bone, showing that the animal had died in the water, when the gases raised it to the surface and the pressure of so large a body against the head, forced it back. When the gases were liberated the body settled in a mud bank where it became covered over, and lay buried, through all these ages, undisturbed until the recession of the bluffs carried away the tail. Underground channels destroyed the two feet.

But of these bones themselves; how can I describe their condition, I have been faithfully at work on them for over three months, (at this writing), and am just beginning to see that I will have a fine skull when it is cleaned (See Fig. 16). I have since finished it. It was preserved in a clay sandstone that chips at right angles to the bones, breaking them into thousands of pieces. Then the bones are enclosed with a heavy coating of bog iron, and between bones and around them, is stone as hard at flint. The bones themselves are poorly petrified. The spongy bone not filled with rocky material. If the thin outer covering is broken through, the spongy bone within crumbles like an egg shell. If a tool should slip through the covering, the bone within is broken to fragments. How is it possible with such obstacles to ever overcome them and prepare the skeleton for study and exhibition? Well! first of all, whenever after the most careful scraping and cutting I got some bone exposed, I filled it with diluted shellac or a thin solution of ambroid, a cement I like better than shellac, although it is costly. Then it must be left, (for a bone wet with shellac is like mud), until thoroughly dry, and hard. The rock, too, must be held together and strengthened in the same way. What seemed for weeks an impossible task, became possible; as I got the bones harder and harder. I had a solid mass to work against with steel tools. These were either small chisels or scrapers, made by beveling off the end of large harness makers straight awls, (made in Germany), or I used tools George made especially for me. He became quite skilful in tempering tools. It is needless to say that the tools that can be used in preparing one specimen cannot be used for another. Where the rock is not too hard, a saddler’s crooked awl is very useful, but with the skull referred to it would have been of no use whatever. Patience, and unremitting enthusiasm, and the hope of success, even with this specimen the worse one to prepare I ever saw, have made success possible.

So the preparation of these Red Deer River Dinosaurs, require courage and patience, not only for me, but for the boys, working incessantly and going slowly to the finish. We must have complete control of our nerves, a moment’s impatience might wreck a specimen we have sought for years. It is a great achievement to mount one of the noble relics of God’s creative power in the past. Our laboratory is Holy Ground. The earth is a great plant, from which, for countless millions of years the Creator has been turning out the creatures of his hand. Each, “having seed in itself.” It is discouraging when I think of the multitudes that throng our Exhibition Hall, to know how few carry any thing away with them. They simply satisfy a curiosity, with little conception of the enormous energy the collector and preparator expend, in heart breaking months of exploration, and nerve trying labor in the shop. Yet some are really interested, I remember talking for an hour or more in shop and exhibition hall, with a minister of the Church of England. When he left he remarked “I feel as if I had been talking with God” so closely had I led him to Nature’s great heart. When after months of anxiety and labor we get a specimen mounted permanently for study or exhibition, we are relieved of a strain few can comprehend. The nearly complete skeleton of Stephanosaurus of Lambe, or Corythosaurus, of Brown is seen in (Fig. 16). The front limbs, the shoulders, and half the trunk has been covered and separated into two sections. I am sitting down to the right at work on the less perfect specimen. With a little restoration, however, both individuals can be made into fine mounts. What is missing in one, can be supplied by making casts of the parts present in the other. A vast amount of labor was expended in taking up these two specimens, done chiefly under the management of Charles M. Sternberg. We might have even lost the one that proved so fine but for him. I had only found a few toe bones and a tibia and fibula covered with heavy concretions; his labor, however, developed the greater part of the skeleton with the best skull of these crested duck-bills we have found.

The rocks of the Belly River series of the Cretaceous are quite different from those of the Edmonton. There are many layers of gray sandstone beautifully fluted, often with outlying mushroom-like pillars (See Fig. 19), as in the picture. Lying around too, are the traveled boulders that once lay on the prairie that has been carried away by water piece meal, leaving them behind. The fluting too, is beautifully represented in this picture showing also, concretions sticking out at different levels that will sooner or later form pillars under the processes of the recession of the cliff. The concretions capping them, preserve them from destruction. Here, (Fig. 20), is a great outlying butte over three hundred feet high. It borders the flood plain of the Dead Lodge Canyon. In the central ground, you will notice, if your eyes are sharp enough, Levi at work on a fossil saurian’s skull. This has since been figured and described by Barnum Brown under the name of Prosaurolophus. Levi found a very good specimen of a crested duck-bill lying athwart a precipitous trail down over the badlands from the prairie. The tail was partially exposed, and not noticed by the Indians and Cow Boys who for years had traveled on this trail (Fig. 21). Charlie found two in the same quarry. He had discovered the first one with the tail sticking out from under a mass of clay about 18 feet high. The prospect of heavy labor never discouraged us. So we attacked the bank and uncovered the skeleton. At the further end of his specimen he found the tail of another leading still farther into the face of the excavation. As there was new surface ground to still explore we covered it with tons of earth to discourage any would-be explorer here, and went back to it the next year.

In Figure 22 the reader will see the excavation left after the two duck-billed dinosaurs were removed. During the season of 1913, Charlie had the most remarkable success. For though he spent six weeks of incessant labor collecting his carnivore, he discovered a duck-bill on his way to assist the teamster with a load. On another occasion while walking to his carnivore he found a new trachodont at the point of a hill (See Fig. 23). This skeleton was preserved in a hard siliceous concretion. During the winter of 1914-15 George prepared the skull for permanent exhibition (Fig. 24). It was placed in the Hall of Fossil Vertebrates, the most perfect duck-billed dinosaur skull I have ever seen. It is in its natural condition, not flattened or otherwise injured by pressure, as is usually the case. We think the skeleton over thirty feet in length, we secured much of the skin impression with it, showing a different pattern from the other known forms. Mr. Lambe calls it Gryposaurus, the high nosed lizard. It will take months of labor to prepare this skeleton. Mr. Lambe in his summary of our work says in the blue book Summary for 1913, of the Geological Survey of Canada, page 293: “The principal field work consisted of an expedition to the Red Deer River, Alberta, to collect dinosaurian and other vertebrate remains from the Belly River Cretaceous in the neighborhood of, and below Berry Creek (Steveville). The party was composed of Charles H. Sternberg and three assistants, its success is to be attributed not only to the skill and experience of those forming the party, [my three sons], but also to the manner in which it was equipped. The party was on Red Deer River from June 20th to October 3. The collection from these rocks, made by the expedition of 1913, reveals in a striking manner the wonderful variety of the dinosaurian life of the period. The field collection of 1913 includes members of the Ceratops (horned dinosaurs, quadrupedal, plant eaters), Trachodontidae (duck-billed dinosaurs, plant eaters), Theropoda (flesh eaters), and Stegosauridae, (heavily armoured plant eaters), Plesiosaurs, crocodiles, turtles, amphibians, and fishes are abundantly represented, and some mammalian remains were also found.” I know of no wilder or more fascinating scenery than that in the Dead Lodge Canyon of the Red Deer river of Alberta. The great layers of sandstone are often beautifully fluted. The strata of clay between sometimes thin out to nothing (Fig. 25). The constant change in butte, and tower ridge and pinnacle, with great concretions, or small ones sticking out of escarpments, like window sills of a skyscraper. Some of the photographs will give a faint idea of the beauty of this great canyon. I here wish to place on record my appreciation of the splendid skill developed by my sons Charlie and George, who took all the photographs I have used to illustrate this book, except those to whom credit will or has been given. Levi too, is learning the art rapidly as evidenced by the illustrations for my expedition for the British Museum for 1916. Great credit too is due Mr. Clark, the head of the Photographic Division of the Survey, who developed and printed these fine photographs. Neither can I forget the kindness of both directors under whom I served, Dr. Brock and Mr. McConnell, who presented me with full sets of the photographs we have taken in field and shop, and Museum and also lantern slides of many.

While in camp, often after supper when our day’s work was at an end, in a reminiscent mood, I told the boys stories. They had often heard before, of my adventures in other fossil fields, and other days, but as distinctly printed on memory’s pages, as if they had occurred but yesterday. I remember recalling an adventure of George and myself in the chalk of Kansas. We had been up towards Monument Rocks and were returning to camp at Elkader, at the mouth of Beaver Creek in Logan county, when we observed a storm gathering in the northwest, and northeast quite threatening indeed. We were three miles away, and drove like Jehu to get to shelter before the storm broke upon us. However, in spite of our efforts, the storm overtook us on the level prairie. The thunder clouds threw forked lightning to the ground around and in front of us. Where it struck the dry grass of the prairie a little cloud of dust would rise, and the grass would take fire to spread a few yards in a circle, when the rain would follow up and put it out. The thunder cracked in deafening peals with tongues of electricity following at once. A calf was struck and killed a short distance from us, but we escaped with a good soaking.

A still more remarkable incident happened to Levi and me at Livingstone’s ranch in Gove county, Kansas, seven miles south of Quinter. Our tents were pitched on Hackberry Creek near the ranch barn, a large affair covered with sheet iron. Towards evening we saw a great dust cloud coming towards us from the northwest. I sent Levi to the barn to put the horses in, they had been standing in the corral near by. He had hardly accomplished this, when the storm was upon us; the gravel and sand beat on the iron roof like hail. He stood in the door with a lighted lantern. I feared the roof might fall in and break the lamp, and set fire to the hay, and I shouted to him to put it out, but he could not hear me. It became instantly dark as midnight, as the air was dense with gravel, sand and dirt driven at terrible speed by the raging wind. I started to the barn a hundred yards away, and got my face cut with the flying sand, my eyes blinded with dirt. But I reached him and put out the light and we attempted by holding each other’s hand, to reach the tents. Suddenly we saw an electric light hanging over our tent, on a telephone wire that was stretched above. Then another and another sparkled in the darkness along the line and lighted up the posts and wire fence on either side of the lane we were following. As far as we could trace the telephone wire, little lights swung in the wind as if some one had turned on a switch to light us to camp. It was certainly a little uncanny to say the least, and if I had been superstitious, I might have been frightened. Levi went off to bed in another tent, I watched the strange phenomenon until I too, got tired, and turned into my bed and went to sleep. All this is part of a Fossil Hunter’s day’s work. Although this was the first time I had ever seen an exhibition of this peculiar kind of electric display on the prairie I was sure it represented what is called St. Elmo’s Fire at sea.

On July 18, 1913, I note that I had worked all day on Charlie’s large trachodont which Mr. Lambe called, as I said above, Gryposaurus. Twenty feet of the skeleton, besides the head was present. On page 23, Book A, field notes for 1913, I say: “The skull is 3 feet 3 inches long. Distance between the orbits, 9 inches. It is 19 inches from the margin of the mandibles to the top of the skull. Which has a high narrow set of nasals, with curved beak shaped like Brown’s New Mexican Trachodont.” Then again, on page 25, “I have worked all day on Charlie’s huge trachodont. It is a wonder, poorly preserved in a huge brown flint concretion that is shattered into irregular fragments, that break through the bones as well. The under part of the skeleton, however, is in grey sandstone and clay. The body lay on its left side, then took a turn and rested on the ventral surface. The ossified tendons are different from the ordinary duck-bills, both with or without crests; they are often barbed in the center and bifurcated at one end, with the other flattened. This specimen is evidently new. I am very anxious to save it.”

The fluted pyramids and Gothic towers stand out distinctly to the south of the specimen in the early morning and after sundown: but in the heat of the day the colors blend so, the sharp outlines of the different strata are not easily distinguished.

On July 19th Mr. Barnum Brown went down the river with his scow, motor boat and rowboat, bearing his party of five men and all his outfit. They intended to camp on Sand Creek, which they did, and never left that richest of all the camps in the Belly River Series in Dead Lodge Canyon for three seasons; the richest, doubtless, in history. I believe there are more exposures of the strata there, than all the rest of the exposures put together. I could not leave the great carnivore Charlie had found. Or my wonderful Chasmosaurus skeleton, showing the dermal covering for the first time in the history of horned dinosaurs. Neither could we leave the splendid skeleton of Gryposaurus, or my new duck-billed dinosaur to follow Brown and share with him the gleanings of that rich field. Consequently, with his five collectors, all first class men, filled with energy and enthusiasm, with such a leader and hunter, it is little wonder that he secured that year a great collection, now being mounted in the American Museum. He also spent the seasons of 1914 and 1915 there also, most successfully. The Belly River beds below Steveville and near our camp, consist chiefly, as already mentioned, of strata of silver grey sandstone, alternating with yellowish or ash-colored clays. Notice the picture (Fig. 25), how the dark clay bed feathers out. The exposed clay beds crack after a rain, like the mud flats of the river, and curl up on the surface when dry. The fluting of the sand-beds is due to the fact that they contain so much clay, that during a rain, the whole surface is puddled and the water cannot pass through the thin coating of mud, and runs off the surface in countless rivulets sculpturing the soft mass into the most beautiful flutings imaginable. This we have often noticed before.

There are neither wells or springs in these beds, not enough water penetrating them to produce either. There are, however, many underground passages through which the water finds its way during a rain to lower levels. Near the top of the badlands, or anywhere through them, often, a sink hole is formed. The water first forming a cistern, until a way is found for it downward, and the water escapes at last through the mouth of a cave, it has formed. These passages are choked with fallen rock from above, or from the sides, which in turn are disintegrated and are carried out by water until we have a series of natural bridges over the chasm, which break down at last, and produce a ravine. We used water from these cisterns on several occasions to make plaster. There was one containing many gallons near Charlie’s carnivore.

We were often bitterly disappointed in our finds. Take for instance Levi’s crested dinosaur. He found some exposed tail vertebrae a little to one side of a horse trail that came over the rocks from the open prairie above, down to a branch of One Tree Creek, not far from our camp, there Levi found 20 tail vertebrae, the pelvic arch, and hind limbs and many ribs. So as we progressed in uncovering these we felt confident that the entire skeleton was buried there. We were mistaken; no head, neck or front limbs were present. From the fact that some of the long pelvic bones had been snapped off, we concluded the missing parts had gone in death to gorge a living specimen of Gorgosaurus, the Tyrant of the Everglades. Then Charlie removed tons of rock from where he thought the tail of his Gorgosaur lay, only to find it had taken another direction, and the same amount of energy was necessary there as he had wasted on a false scent.

In my notes of the 11th of July, I speak of the windy day: “So strong was the current as I clung to the steep and barren slopes; I would often have lost my footing but for my faithful pick, whose point I drove into the soft rock when I felt as if I was about to be blown into a deep canyon. I would cling to my pick until there was a lull, or I had secured a better footing. My pick, under the providence of God, often saved my life. Once in the brakes of the Permian beds of Texas, on a Saturday evening a great storm threatened. I though we could reach Mr. Galyean’s house before it burst. His son was with me, a boy of about 15 years of age. We had gone only a short distance, however, when the rain fell in sheets, not only drenching us to the skin but filling innumerable ditches with water running like a mill race. These we must cross. I remember we passed through the same patch of weeds repeatedly, so I knew in the darkness we were walking in a circle. Every few feet was a deep and narrow ditch full to the brim with red muddy water. I found these rushing streams by pushing my pick ahead of me, as the only time we saw anything was when the lightning flashed. At last we got sight of the light in McBride’s house a mile up the creek from Galyean’s. We thus secured the direction and thought we were all right, but without our knowledge, some one moved it from a south to an east window and we got off again, and before we knew it were slipping down into the roaring Coffee Creek full of driftwood. If we had slipped into it, both of us would have been lost. The boy had hold of my coat tails; I struck the point of my pick into the muddy slope and swung around with John hanging on behind describing the arc of a circle. The pick held while we dug holds with our heels to support us until I could reach upward and take another hold with the faithful pick. Thus we got out on the level flood plain of the creek. I then allowed John to take the lead, and he took me as if by instinct, safely to his father’s house where we were soon drying our clothes before the fireplace, heaped high with blazing cottonwood chunks.”

Mr. Lawrence M. Lambe the Vertebrate Paleontologist of the Survey visited my camp on the 12th of September, 1913. We visited all the different localities where were the different specimens we were collecting, much to his delight. He described many of them the following winter. In a large exposure near Steveville, we were led by my son George to a fine turtle, one of the largest forms. The shell is over two feet long.